The other day I talked about breaking the Conservative Evangelical rule that every sermon has to be expository. Here is the paradox, you may have ended up being at least as if not more expository by relaxing the rule. I say potentially more expository first, because what happens when we try to force fit an… Continue reading Why that Christmas talk may have been more expository than you think
Tag: expository preaching
Preparing to preach at Christmas? … First break all the rules
Or at least two of them… One of my favourite books is by Marcus Buckingham and it’s called First Break All the Rules. It’s about how leaders are taught a whole load of conventions or rules but truly successful ones break those rules. In effect Buckingham is seeking to discover a better set of leadership… Continue reading Preparing to preach at Christmas? … First break all the rules
You might need to step back to get the point
There’s an old saying about not being able to see the wood for the trees. I wrote the other day about the problems with equating verse by verse with expositional preaching. In fact, a sermon may be expositional when taking a short phrase, a verse, passage, chapter or even whole book of the Bible. I… Continue reading You might need to step back to get the point
Why verse by verse preaching may not always equal good exposition
John MacArthur’s Grace To You ministry describes its purpose as “unleashing God’s Truth, One verse at a time.” It is often assumed that Expository preaching is about working verse by verse through a text. Certainly, good expository preaching does require that we dig into the detail of the text. However, verse by verse may not… Continue reading Why verse by verse preaching may not always equal good exposition
John MacArthur 1939-2025
News broke overnight that John MacArthur has died. He was pastor of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California. MacArthur was perhaps most known in recent years for two major controversies, first there were question marks about significant pastoral and church discipline issues in his church, second his resistance to Covid restrictions. I’ve written about… Continue reading John MacArthur 1939-2025
How do we let the preaching of God’s Word do its job?
I recently preached on Luke 8 which includes the parable of the Sower and Jesus’ follow on explanation about how parables work. The surprising thing is that when the disciples come to Jesus and ask him what the parable means, he doesn’t say something to the effect that parables are earthly stories with heavenly meaning… Continue reading How do we let the preaching of God’s Word do its job?
The parable of The Sower with wide angled lens on
My dad used to have an SLR camera. It was novel in those days to have a camera where the view finder looked directly down the main camera lens. It also mean that he could switch between lenses. A telescopic lens enabled him to focus in on detail in the distance, a wide angled lens… Continue reading The parable of The Sower with wide angled lens on
Preaching: what and how.
This is one of the additional chapters to “How do you know?” That I mentioned I was planning It is impossible to talk about the Doctrine of Revelation and how we know about God, Creation, Humanity and New Creation without talking about preaching. What is preaching? It’s important though to be clear about what we… Continue reading Preaching: what and how.
How to listen to sermons
Here is another little e-book. Partly this arose because there is perhaps a need for training to listen to as well as to preach sermons. Partly it’s because thinking about how we should listen to sermons affects how we think about preaching them too. this short book covers different types of sermon including expository, topical… Continue reading How to listen to sermons
Don’t quote God out of context
Faithroots Podcast on Bible Communication (part 2)
Faithroots 